U.S. Groups Eye Second Obama Decision On China Yuan

U.S. labor and manufacturing groups urged President Barack Obama on Tuesday to live up to his campaign rhetoric and formally label China a currency manipulator in a Treasury Department report due out next week.

But Nicholas Lardy, a China economic policy watcher at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said he’d be “shocked” if Obama took that step now.

Obama faces his second decision on the currency issue in a semi-annual report due to Congress on October 15.

During last year’s campaign, Obama criticized then-President George W. Bush for repeatedly failing to label Beijing a currency manipulator, but then made the same decision in his first stab at the issue in April.